Noticing odd things here and there!

Now the brain fog is clearing and the fatigue is not so bad every day I look back over the weeks since I found myself out front that I don’t have memory of each entire day, not only that but since we started googling and researching to see if anyone has similar symptoms we are coming across posts in other groups with not only similar symptoms and stories but also have alters with similar/same names..

I mean ..it’s a big old world I guess and I know I’m not going to be the only ‘Ezri’ in the world etc but still some posts seem to have an odd familiarity to them!

If I make note of the time they were made it will often be that I thought that was a time we were resting or I suddenly realise I can’t remember at all what I was actually doing at that time/day!

It never occurred to me before until we had news that GK had found a few more headmates inside who we don’t seem to be co-conscious with. (Some of who also had memory issues) …now I’m starting to wonder if they are others switching out with myself and Mila? … they don’t seem to be posting on this board..a lot of the posts were from before I first re-emerged so it is possible it was the last host or one of their team, but we’ve found a few more recent posts that would have been made during the time I thought it was just me, Mila and GK!

I don’t know if it’s an honest memory lapse because maybe after they switch out with us they have no memory of what I did? I mean I have had quite severe memory issues since re-emerging myself…maybe there’s another alter having the same difficulties? ..and trying to find help but in different places? …or someone is actively trying to ‘sneak out’ and just maybe didn’t think I would find the other posts if I only posted on here?

It’s just odd and I’m not sure what to do about it..GK thinks it’s unlikely it’s the first couple she found as they seemed confused about who they were and so far haven’t shown any signs of knowing that there’s an outside world. They have also been with her since she found them and presently helping her look to see if there are any others. ..so I know they are inside and `I am outside right now typing this …Mila is with me.

By tomorrow though I may find myself back here looking to see if anyone posted advice but find I have no memory of later on this day and wonder what we did for the remainder of the day, it’s just odd!

Dissociation can do that. Especially during the "becoming aware" time. Becoming aware can be so stressful that the brain can shove the memory under the rug or even becomes unable to record any memory at all!

What is important is that you are becoming aware of your dissociative symptoms. Because it means you become aware of what help to look for in order to manage and to get better. And that is super awesome.

Another thought was what if our system doesn’t like the ‘becoming aware’ stage …. If the other alters find it so stressful at that point it leads to depression and the system deliberately ‘resetting itself’ so it can start again and have a couple of months/years of oblivion to relieve the depression without needing medication or something??

Maybe the time it takes to reach ‘awareness’ is getting shorter each time and so the ‘resets’ become more frequent?

Been there, done that, got all the Tshirts.

Becoming aware then forgetting and crisis then aware then another forgetting and crisis then aware again... untill the brain can manage the aware, it happens to a lot of us.

Ok so this seems to be part of the DID?

Well it seems to have reset some alters memories so they don’t know who they are…

GK has found like a farmhouse on the inside, the child recognised some of the toys in a room. The weird thing is the inside of the house is a mix of having rooms that look like the inside of this house and rooms that look like photo’s of the house I grew up in. The child specifically felt the rooms that seemed to be from ‘further back in time’ felt ‘more familiar’ and so did the young man who GK found with the child. Neither have yet remembered their names!

Once the child saw the another child’s room in the house though it seemed to trigger an ‘homing call’ to Mila, she returned to the room separated from the ‘merged inner body’ and returned back to the front separately. The ‘internal body’ left behind has so far remained asleep in the bed of that room, so we can’t ask them what they remember yet.

Mila has now found she has the ability to ‘change form’ and some of ‘her own’ memories have been ‘decompressed’ …she no longer feels like she has a ‘mish-mash’ of other people’s memories.

So things are starting to happen…maybe this ‘inner farmhouse’ was where the other alters lived? Maybe this one that is ‘slipping out’ is just also trying to find the ones missing from inside?

It is not "part of DID" because you can have DID and not have the "aware-then-amnesia" loop. But it is common for people with DID to experience the loop.

As for the inner farmhouse: it could be old, it could be new and reusing pieces from the previous inner house, or it could be new and the fusion of different previous houses, and so on. The inner world changs with time to adapt to what we need at any point in time.

Hi I’m Ellie….Ezri needed a break they’ve been fronting constantly and find it exhausting. I don’t think any of us were used to being the one outside constantly full time, is that what we’re supposed to be aiming for? ..with everyone else staying inside?

The farmhouse is nice, the others we found are inside resting, we all seem to have some memory issues to differing degrees. We’ve found while some of us can front at same time, share control and enjoy each others company…when another recently tried to get to front it switched Ezri …and Mila (who had been blended with her at the time) out.

Ellie

Shadowlands wrote:I don’t think any of us were used to being the one outside constantly full time, is that what we’re supposed to be aiming for? ..with everyone else staying inside?

What therapy aims for is to allow for anybody to front whenever they want while still being able to do everything anybody can do, and without being exhausted.

It sounds like a lot because it is a lot! That's why therapy takes time and work and doing it baby step by baby step. Nobody can just wake up one day and go "okay from now on I'm fully integrated!" it's not possible. The brain cannot do it like that. It takes time and energy to grow and strenghten the connexions inside the brain.

A good first step is to communicate with each others, know who can do what and try to match alters to tasks. "tasks" include innerwork such as: comforting each-other, managing triggers, grounding, etc. It's already a HUGE and GIGANTENORMOUS first step, that's enough work and thinking for a start, usually. The end goal is what I said in my 1st paragraph, but getting to the first huge step is already work enough and worth celebrating.

Any step forward is worth celebrating.

Ok thanks though it’s not like Ezri just decided they would take over the front… we kind of ‘found ourselves’ at the front unsure of who we were.

I wasn’t sure the body belonged to me.. I still don’t feel it’s ‘my body’ as such but don’t mind hosting for short periods to give Ezri a break.

Mila ‘felt strange’ cos as we now know she had others within her ..it seems that was a temporary measure now knowing she’s some kind of guardian it was possibly her role to protect the younger ones from damage.

Though we can’t explain why the little boy and the other guy got separated…or the other female (we are now temporarily calling Maya) who was looking for ‘her children’.

Obviously we know the legal name as we have household bills/letters with the bodies name and address on etc we know we are ‘a system’ we just can’t remember how many are supposed to be in it, whether we have ‘everyone yet’, if they had own nicknames for ones that don’t identify with ‘the external body’

Mila seemed to think ‘insiders’ referred to the outside as ‘the outer wilds’ but we can’t find a system with that name that ‘resembles us’… we came up with Shadowlands because we felt like we had just emerged out of dark underground shelter or something into a different world, still feeling a bit disorientated.

The most logical explanation we can come up with knowing our medical history too is some kind of FND episode happened, maybe the system shut down the inside to try to protect everyone in it but maybe couldn’t get everyone together fast enough?

Given Mila had some inside her, she had obviously tried to round up some of the younger ones. We can only speculate she was on her way to try and get the little boy too but was unable to complete her task due to the medical incident taking place at that moment…maybe Ezri and myself were the ones she found first as we ‘woke up’ first at the front?

Strangely now I remember Mila telling me our only chance was ‘to flood’ Ezri with enough memories so she could hold the front as she contained ‘the first born into the body’ which was why we both joined with her temporarily to ‘wake her up’ so she could take the front.

I remember being told to only transfer any practical skills/daily living memories I had (for now) though I don’t hold any specific trauma memories anyway. I think Mila filtered the collective memories from the others inside her too to give Ezri a ‘sense of who she was’ and so she felt it was ‘her body’ when she woke up (so she could instantly connect to it to make sure she could still move/speak etc)

I feel we did the best we could in the moment.and everyone’s still feeling a bit ‘jetlagged’ from the huge adrenaline rush during the recovery effort.

Physically it seems to NOT have been a full blown relapse …more like an ‘inner electrical storm that blew out communications and damaged some memory files’. ..we’re still trying to work out who has what memories and who (if any) are still ‘missing’

Ellie

Take your time, it's a hard work to piece these things together.

Remember there is a ressources list (link in my signature) some of the ressources are about how to build cooperation etc such as >> these articles <<